star-spangled vail after vail of matter fall, if, by the downfall of each, he be brought nearer and nearer to the Great Spirit; and what though he leave room after room of splendor behind him on his rapid way, if he be approaching always—though never absolutely to reach-that "secret place of thundering," that "holiest of all," where dwells the always Old, the always Young, the All-Wise and the Ever-Silent, the Inscrutable and Eternal One.

Here we draw down the curtain, and drop the theme. If we have, in the volume now concluded, taught one man to love the Bible more, or one to hate it less-if we have stumbled but one on his dreary way to the wrong side of the great Armageddon valley, or have cheered but one spirit that was trembling for the ark of God-if we have shot but one new pang of the feeling of the Bible's surpassing truth and beauty, across the minds of the literary public, or expressed but a tithe of our own youthimplanted and deep-cherished convictions and emotions on the surpassing theme, then this volume, with all its deficiencies, has not been written in vain.

The spirit of the whole production seems to demand it to close in the words of a poet's invocation :-

"Come, then, and, added to thy many crowns,
Receive yet one, the crown of all the best,
Thou who alone art worthy! It was thine

By ancient covenant, ere nature's birth,

And thou hast made it thine by purchase too,

And overpaid its value by thy blood.

Thy saints proclaim thee king, and in their hearts
Thy title is engraven with a pen,

Dipped in the fountains of eternal love.

Thy saints proclaim thee King, and thy delay
Gives courage to thy foes, who, could they see
The dawn of thy last Advent, long desired,
Would creep into the bowels of the hills,
And flee for safety to the falling rocks.
The very spirit of the world is tired

Of its own taunting question asked so long, 'Where is the promise of your Lord's approach ?'

SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER.

THE POETICAL CHARACTERS IN SCRIPTURE.

BESIDE the authors and poets of the Old and New Testaments, there are, in the course of both, a number of characters depicted, teeming with peculiar and romantic interest, and who are abundantly entitled to the epithet poetical. It were unpardonable, in a book professing to include a summary of all the poetical elements of the Book of God, to omit a rapid survey of these, neither mute nor inglorious, although no songs have they sung, nor treatises of truth recorded, but who, "being dead, yet speak," in the eloquence, passion, devotion, or peculiarity and wickedness, of their histories. We are, therefore, tempted to annex the following chapter, as an appendix to the volume.

First among these, stands Adam himself. How interesting the circumstances of his formation! Mark with what dignity God accompanied the making of man. Behold the whole Trinity consulting together ere they proceeded to this last and greatest work of the Demiurgic days. God had only said"Let there be light, let there be a firmament, let the waters be gathered together, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind;" but, when man was to be taken out of the clay, the style of Deity rises, if we may so speak, above itself, and he says "Let us make man after our own likeness."

We may imagine ourselves present at this thrilling moment. A mist is watering the face of the ground, and partially bedimming the sun. Slowly, yet mysteriously, is the red clay drawn out of the ground, fashioned, and compacted into the' shape of man, till the future master of the world is, as to his

bodily part, complete, and lies, statue-like and still, upon the dewey ground. But speedily, like a gentle breeze, the breath of the Lord passes over his face, and he becomes a living soul, and his eyes open upon the green glad earth, and the orb of day shining through a golden mist, and his ears open to the melodies, which seem to salute him as Lord of all, and he starts to his feet, and stretches out his hands to the sun as if to embrace it, and the mists disperse, and the beams of noon show him Eden shining in all its beauty-the abode of man, and the garden of God. His emotions can no more be conceived than described. The infant is introduced step by step into the sight of the great temple of the creation. But it must have burst in all but an instant upon the view of the man-boy, Adam. His happiness, however, was not yet complete: he was still alone. And he could not be long in the world till he desired a companion. The sun he could not grasp; the moon, walking in her brightness, he could not detain; the trees cooled his brow, but yielded no sympathy to his heart. His own shadow was but a cold and coy companion. And, probably, while full of cravings after society, which mingled with and damped his new-born raptures of joy, he felt creeping over him the soft influences of slumber. He slept. There was sleep in Eden: perhaps there may be sleep in heaven! Man was scarcely created till he slept; and, while asleep, "God took one of his ribs, and made of it a woman," not of rude clay, but of the finished portion of a finished man, forming her from a finer material, and clothing her with a more fascinating loveliness. "He brought her to the man," as a companion to his joys, for sorrows as yet he had none, to talk with him in Eden, in the large sweet utterance of a tongue tuned and taught by God himself, to wander with him by the rivers of paradise, to be united to him by a tie of tender and indissoluble affection. With joy he welcomed her as the breathing essence-the perfumed marrow of his own being-"bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh;" and surely we may believe that the harps of angels, as well as the glad sounds of nature, celebrated the happy union.

This fair and noble product was made in "God's image" understanding not by this, as some suppose, his erect bodily form-a form possessed by apes as well as by men—but a similitude of mental and moral character, mingled together in large and equal proportions. We deny not, indeed, that this may have expressed itself in the outward lineaments of our first parents, nor will call those mere enthusiasts who may tell us i that Adam was fairer far than any of his sons, and Eve, than any of her daughters; nay, that the sun is not more glorious than the face of the first man, nor the rising moon of evening more beautiful than that of the first woman. But the glory was chiefly mental and moral. Adam bore-a mental resemblance to his Maker. He had an ample intellect, a rich imagination, united together by a link of burning soul, as superior to that of Milton, who sang him in strains which shall never die, as that to the trodden worm. But he had not only a high, but a holy spirit-a conscience the most undefiled-a sense of duty electrically quick-affections sunning themselves in God-and a love pure, and bright, and constant as the lamps which, while shining in the divine presence, owe their radiance to the divine eye. Eve, in a more soft and shadowy light, reflected the ardent splendors of his character. Alas! that two such children should ever have erred, and that a crown so beautiful and so delicately woven, should have dropped from their heads!

Drop, however, it did. prime was as short as it was beautiful. Eden is gone, and gone forever. It was but a spot in a dark earth, after all, supernaturally gilded, and its very wreck remains not. No more do its bowers shower " roses on the first lovers;" no more do its streams murmur music in their ears; no more are the shadows of mailed angels reflected in the four rivers; no more is the voice of God heard in our groves, or in our gardens, in the cool of the day. But let the prospects of the future cheer us in the memory of the sorrows of the past. Let the breezes soon to begin to blow upon us from the land of Millennial rest—or, at all events, let the prospects of an eternal heaven, of a paradise in the skies,

That first hour of the world's